The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1887-06-01
A TIME TO REST.


The President and his family, official
and personal, have gone to the Adiron-
dacks for a few weeks rest. IL is well
enough. They will be the better of it, and
the country will be none the worse. In
the long run no business suffers by the
comparative vacations of its managers. 1t
would lose more by the lassitude of I'M
resting and exhausted attention, than by
complete absence, followed by renewed
energy and mental clearness. There is
always the expression OF general experience
in popular sdsge, and sail work and no
play makes Jack dull boy'
is truism as well worth
systematic recognition as any between
poor Richard and Lacon. Esop's unstrung
bow has symbalized the worlds judgment
en- this point of human conduct for more
than 2, 500 years. The English and Europe
an occupants of public offices, at least
those carrying serious responsibilities, have
recognized by series OF precedents that
have practically made law. They take va
cations at certain times, and the public APP
proves with as little hesitancy as it approves
application to a doctor for sickness. The
mass of the members of Parliament and
officials in England, like the mass ot the
members of Congress and officials
here, never hurt themselves by
overwork, but there are always some in
both bodies who attend to their duties con-
scientiously, and to these weeks vacation
occasionally. or months at longer inter-
walls, is a positive addition to their public
value that would be advantageously OBJ
tanned at double salary while resting.
We have Cabinet ministers and chiefs of
bureaus who don't get sufficient rest to
come to work each succeeding day as
effective as the day before. They feel it
and say it, bat they can't help it. They
can't tear out of the web of their
duties and leave the strings and
tags hanging unattached for u month
while they regain wasted power. So they
wait for better chance, and pu. off the
recreation, and the chance doesn't come,
and they wait through another postpone
ment, and the year closes, "the harvest is
past, the summer is ended, and they are
not saved" as jeremiah has it. The prac-
teal lesson of the lack of vacation to over
worked men in public life is that law
should provide some apt opportunity for
the victims, that they might feel that they
were not neglecting their business or abus-
ing the confidence of the country. For
overworked private life there is no remedy
bat the growth and diffusion of popular, or
at least fashionable, opinion and prece-
dent, and that seems to be moving ahead
and abroad pretty rapidly just now.
There is ten-feld the interest and atten-
ton and outlay in recreation and relief
from business now that there was gen
Grafton ago. The ball games rowing feats,
races, home sports, fishing, shooting, yacht
ing, canoeing, gipsying in.tent-life in the
woods, are as infallible resort of such
classes of the community as can spare the
time and the expense as the return of the
seasons that sent chem. Thirty years ago
how many families had croquet lawns,
who had heard of tennis or baseball ex-
cept as a school-boy diversion, or family
fishing parties tenCing on the banks ct
pleasant streams, or boating expedi-
tions, or athletic parks, or associa-
tions to promote physical culture and
wholesome entertainment? Now, where
do you not hear OF them, see them, read OF
them as regularly and fully as you used to
read of the proceedings of Legislatures or
party conventions. Fashion, popular taste,
the general common sense of community
are making big and wholesome gaps in the
close fever of business that once shut out
everything every day of the week except
Sunday, and did not always open for that,
and only unlocked a rusty holiday gate on
Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and Fourth
of July. 1t is a good sign, though, of
course, there is bad mixed with the good,
play overdone, play not too innocent, as
there will be while human nature remains
unchanged. But the total result is good.